Switching Gears Transforms EMSCO’s NAV System

One of the largest surplus, used and refurbished electrical equipment dealers in the U.S., Electric Motor Supply Company (EMSCO), is a family owned business started in 1948. With a 250,000 square foot warehouse and 16 miles of bus way, the company is able to keep most brands and styles of a variety of industrial electrical equipment right under their roof. Located just outside of Minneapolis in Fridley, Minnesota, EMSCO stocks thousands of bus plugs, transformers, circuit breakers, motor control centers, medium voltage gear, electric motors and many different sizes of switchgear.

A Disconnect with Software Vendor

For over 50 years, EMSCO has been buying and selling new, used and reconditioned electrical equipment. As a family business with very little staff turnover, much of the ever changing electrical supply inventory information was held by the individuals in the organization. The company had implemented Microsoft Dynamics NAV years ago to manage the accounting functions of the business. However, as time went by, they wanted to accomplish more in NAV than they were currently able to do. This included a desire to get the inventory information out of everyone’s heads and into an inventory management solution.

According to Joe Faust, Sales and IT manager of EMSCO, “We were getting a lot of system errors and the daily functionality we needed wasn’t there for us. The vendor we had worked with to install NAV years before wasn’t able to give us the support we needed to make NAV work the way we needed it to.” Joe expanded, “In fact, we had decided to look for a new vendor and new software, as we didn’t know if NAV could accomplish what we needed.”

EMSCO started looking for a new vendor; specifically one that offered multiple product lines, was local, and who had expertise in the distribution industry. “We wanted someone who could offer us solutions for our issues, not just sell us new software,” stated Joe. “It was important that they understood distribution and could easily grasp our unusual inventory situation.” After looking at several vendors, Business Automation Specialists of Minnesota (BASM) became the clear choice.

Switching Gears Saves EMSCO from a Complex and Costly System Change

Find out how … read the rest of this case study on our website at http://www.bautomation.com/resources/testimonials/ and read how EMSCO’s systems and processes were transformed.